“…any food product that feels compelled to tell you it’s natural in all likelihood is not.”—-Michael Pollan

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Somm In Your Pants™!

The biggest fear of wine lovers is the fear of appearing stupid. As if spending all of your disposable income buying wine isn’t stupid on the face of it. God forbid you buy a new pair of pants once in a while, maybe shoes. Oh no, not when BevMo’s having a Five Cent Sale. Buy two wines not worth a nickel because one just won’t do. No, that’s not stupid.

But what if we could take the fear out of wine? What if you never had to appear stupid in front of your wine-knowledgeable friends again? What would that be worth to you? It should be worth a lot, as often as you are stupid about wine. Remember when you thought “terroir” was Harry Waugh’s sister? Wow, how stupid was that? And then there was the time you thought downy mildew necessitated a trip to the gynecologist. I hope you’ve trimmed your canopy since then. Really, what if we could promise you’d never look stupid about wine again?

Well, we can!

Introducing Somm In Your Pants™, the new app from the folks who brought you the popular behavioral app Psych In Your Pants™, and the best-selling advice app Aunts In Your Pants™. With Somm In Your Pants™, you’ll never look like a jackass about wine again. And won’t that be a relief! It will be to your friends.

Somm In Your Pants™ is like having your own sommelier with you 24 hours a day. It’s like being married to Larry Stone, only without all that whining and begging for sex, not to mention the lingering smell of Old Spice. And it’s a sommelier that understands your tastes, as well as your personal insecurities. How? You teach it, that’s how. The more you interact with Somm In Your Pants™ the better your results. Our app actually learns from YOU. Not about wine, of course, you don’t know crap about wine or you wouldn’t be out buying apps. Frankly, it’s embarrassing that you need a wine app, or, well, that anybody needs a wine app. Maybe if you shopped for wine at places where the people working there know something about wine, instead of buying closeout wines at Trader Joe’s and taking advice from a kid in a Hawaiian shirt who has to wear his bike helmet all the time. No, Somm In Your Pants™ has a patented program that learns your tastes in wine and then tries to teach you something, while also trying to stop you from being so stinking cheap all the damn time.

OK, let’s just say that you’re wandering the aisles at Costco, you know, helping to put small business owners out of work. You come to the wine section and you need to buy a bottle of Chardonnay. What do you do? Read the stupid shelf talkers, you mouth-breathing simpleton? Reading shelf talkers is like believing blurbs in movie ads. Every damn wine has one. Points over 90, Medals over Silver, descriptions that can’t possibly be true, except it’s in print, so, to a moron, it must be true! Well, if you have a Somm In Your Pants™, you don’t need anything else.

Just take your iPhone, enable the Somm In Your Pants™, and say the name and price of the wine you’re thinking of purchasing into the phone. In seconds, you’ll have a personalized text from your very own personal sommelier. He even acts like a sommelier!

“Hello," you say, "I’m looking at a Rombauer Chardonnay for $30.” You wait a few seconds, and then the Somm In Your Pants™ replies:

“Is there a vintage? Oh wait, it’s Rombauer, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need a vintage for your Aunt Jemima either, do you? You bought that boring Chardonnay the last time, and the time before that! Wow, you are the RutMeister. I know, why don’t you try some Diet Chardonnay this time, one without all the sugar? Maybe a nice Macôn. Oh, wait, you’re at Costco! Silly me. Just buy whatever you want. Or go to a real wine shop and call me back.”

See? Only you can read the text, so you walk away from the Chardonnay and save yourself from looking stupid. What a gift! Somm In Your Pants™ can do the impossible, keep you from looking like a shithead. Sound too good to be true? How about this?

You’re in a fancy restaurant (as if) looking at their extensive wine list. You’re on a date (as if) and you need to not look stupid selecting an appropriate wine. The sommelier intimidates you. She looks like Steve Buscemi in a dress (most of them do). What do you do? Well, luckily, you have a Somm In Your Pants™.

“Hello, I’m dining at Restaurant Gougé. Can you make a suggestion?”

In seconds, after finding the wine list at Restaurant Gougé online and running the wines through its extensive data base, you hear from your personal sommelier, who bears no resemblance to Steve Buscemi, but will treat you as a human sommelier would.

“Does it matter to you what you’re eating at all? I’m guessing you probably want a Pinot Noir. You don’t care what you order for dinner, you’ll just order Pinot Noir with anything. How was it with the halibut last week? Crappy, like I told you it would be? So, fine, let’s see. What about that nice little Pommard on the list? Yes, it’s Pinot Noir. And when you order it, don’t pronounce the ‘d’ on the end, for the love of God. The ‘d’ is silent, like in ‘umbshit.’”

You order the Pommard, your date is impressed, and, more than likely, you get a handjob from your date under the tablecloth, with an assist from the Somm In Your Pants™!

Somm In Your Pants™ is a revolution in wine technology. Think of the time you’ll save not having to read wine books or go to tastings. Somm In Your Pants™ is so good it’s been banned from WSET classes, which are crawling with idiots! When you have a Somm In Your Pants™, it’s like carrying an extra dick around with you wherever you go!

17 comments:

Ron:I know everything about wine already. That's how boring I am. But I really don't get how to communicate these days with Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest. What we REALLY need is a Communications advisor in our pants - yes, you got it - COMM in your pants!!

Over at Winedoody he's deeply humbled that no one gives a shit about wine reviews.. what a shocker! As I said before, 99 out of 100 people don't give a shit about wine. And like you asked 200 people at a winery, not one read a wine blog. I think your somm in the pants app while funny, might sell about 10 copies... jeesssuss.. when are these bloggers, wine mag reviewers and somms going to get over themselves??

You have surpassed yourself Ron. In 5 years an imbedded somm chip 0n your tongue. Say the wine being propsed by the living Somm and the Chip simulates the taste of the wine and register a score on your google classes. Bob Millman

David,The premise for this piece evolved from about a dozen emails I received, after HoseMaster got "famous" and won Poodles, asking if I'd like to plug wine apps. I'm told there are hundreds of wine apps available, and, as you say, most only sell about ten. So I thought I'd come up with my own wine app, and Somm In Your Pants was born.

Let's see, getting over ourselves, sounds like good advice...

Bob,Hey, thanks for finally becoming a common tater! Your vision of the future of Somm In Your Pants is perfect. An embedded tongue chip sounds like just the thing, and kinky too. Though, truly, Somm In Your Nose might work even better.

Marcia Love,No voices, it's just a text, so as to avoid embarrassment. I just like the idea of a sommelier who looks like Steve Buscemi in a dress. I know one that fits that description. He's kinda cute too.

After I wrote this, a person told me of her encounter with a sommelier in a SF restaurant, who, when she expressed dissatisfaction with the sommelier's wine choice, said to her, "Well, maybe you should take some classes so you can describe the kind of wines you like better." It's like she already owned a Somm In Your Pants!

Ron, I could use an extra dick in my pants. In fact, I would be happy with just one dick in my pants!

And what is the deal with Rombauer?When I was a somm in Laguna Beach and I informed the diner that we did not have Rombauer, he threw a fit. "How could you not have Rombauer?" I tried to mollify him with a lovely Mount Eden Chard, to no avail.

I jokingly told my wine buyer to scrounge around for empty Rombauer bottles so we could pour Two Buck Chuck into it. But, it appears that the guy who had been stealing 3 million worth of wine at Legend Cellars was ahead of me with that idea!

Eric,When I had a wine shop, I was amazed at how many men bought wine, then asked if they could pick it up some other time, when their wives weren't home to see them lug it into the house. That's why wine shops with storage areas do so well--a place for the closet wine splurger (Splooger?)to hide his wines is inspired marketing.

It seems to be a tradition for men to name things concealed in their pants.

Marlene Darling,I may have one you can borrow for as long as you need, though it's currently on loan elsewhere.

My wine list had many wines I didn't want on it, but all of them were top sellers. However, the general manager allowed me to have ONE wine left off the list, one wine of my choosing. I chose Rombauer Chardonnay. And when a customer asked why I didn't have Rombauer and the list, I'd say, "Is that some kind of cult wine? I've never heard of it."

Thomas,It's a common problem in the sommelier business. Flaccid balance.

And I'm surprised, Thomas, that you've forgotten to cure the flaccids with Boner in a Can!

didn't i bother you enough with the parody vs. satire debate? i assumed you'd be happy that i stopped myself from rambling on about how this blog relates to the digital era of cell phone wine recommendations and just laughed at the punch lines for once

I could have used this last year at La Toque. Too bad Somm In Your Pants™ only runs on iPhone. BTW - I admit, I like buying wine at Costco. Isn't life grand when you can buy a Toasted Head Chard and an 8-foot Plastic Halloween Bat with (freakin') Laser Beam Eyes at the same place?

Clinton,Oddly, I've never even been in a Costco. No, actually, I went once, about eight years ago. I know they move a LOT of wine, but, boy, was the selection dull. As one would expect. But that's where the "real" wine business is, the part that actually makes money. Just like the "real" writers who make actual money don't need blogs, they have airports, Amazon and Kindle.

Yo Vinny,It's known as Cougar Juice everywhere. No idea who coined the phrase, but I heard it at least six, maybe seven, years ago. Because it's apt, it stuck.

Subscribe to the HoseMaster via Email

About Me

After 19 years as a Sommelier in Los Angeles, twice named Sommelier of the Year by the Southern California Restaurant Writers' Association, I moved to Sonoma County to explore the other aspects of the wine business. I've spent, OK wasted, 35 years learning about and teaching about and swallowing wine. I am also a judge at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition--so I can spit like a rabid llama. I know more about wine than David Sedaris and I'm funnier than James Laube. Stay tuned for an informed but jaded view of everything wine and everything else.
I'm living proof that alcohol kills brain cells.

Follow the HoseMaster

Meaningless Awards

What the Critics Are Saying About HoseMaster of Wine

"If you want a great hoot and howl moment or two...go read the HoseMaster's year-end reflections...that guy is without a doubt the funniest SOB in the blog-world...and thank him for having the brains and balls to target his laser of laughter on anybody...HoseMaster for President...HoseMaster for Blogger of the Year...although he would be the first to say the bar is so damn low for that award, he should win it every year..."--Robert Parker

"...With sometimes crude analogies and occasional droppings of f-bombs, Washam cleverly uses satire to expose the underbelly of the wine business. It's often hilarious stuff as long as you're not the one being lampooned.Washam takes no prisoners in skewering all that is silly, stupid, frustrating and pretentious about wine, and his favorite targets are other bloggers and writers. No one is immune."

--Linda Murphy in "Vineyard and Winery Management"

"No one is immune from California sommelier and wine judge Ron Washam's skewering. He polishes that skewer with boundless enthusiasm and acuity."--JancisRobinson.com

"As serious as the world of wine is, it does allow time for humor. Each Monday and Thursday, Ron Washam customarily posts a commentary on his needling wine blog HoseMaster of Wine. Washam, a former sommelier and comedy writer – he might say they are closely related – is the most opinionated, humorous and ribald observer in the wine world. His body of work is irreverent and remorseless. It’s almost always satire and parody, though he occasionally drifts into straight commentary, sometimes even with tasting notes. This past year, one of his posts was named the best of the year in the Wine Blog Awards. His success has spawned several imitations, which in their awkwardness show just how difficult satire is."

"Please let this guy write the scripts for Saturday Night Live which has gotten so lame...his newest "wisdom" is worth an Emmy....I wonder if he is the genius behind all those Hitler/Parker,etc. clips? No one else is remotely as funny or as talented.And the wine world sure needs someone to poke fun at all the nonsense and phoney/baloney unsufferable crap out there."

--Robert Parker

"Washam uses his own blog, HoseMaster of Wine, to skewer the industry in general and wine blogs in particular. If your mouse scoots to your browser's close box while reading a wine blog, Washam may be the blogger for you."

--San Francisco Chronicle

"Ron Washam, former sommelier, is easily the most bitingly funny blogger/wine writer that we have ever come across. He is an equal opportunity crusader who pillories big wineries and amateur bloggers alike, as well as everything and everyone in between...One needs a sense of humor and a tolerance for earthiness to enjoy reading The Hosemaster. We must have both because this guy deserves a wider audience, in our humble opinion."--Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine

"In my opinion, and that of many others, his blog is one of the best. And in terms of satirical or parodic wine blogs, it has no peer. Ron’s alert eye catches every pretense and skewers it with laugh out loud mercilessness."

--Steve Heimoff

"This site should carry a warning label. It's sort of a Dave Barry/George Carlin approach to wine. The Hosemaster (real name Ron Washam) skewers fellow bloggers and industry savants with glee, while offering hilarious wine guides such as his Honest Guide to Grapes..."

--Paul Gregutt, Seattle Times

"Washam is a skilled wine judge (I have judged with him) who is willing to judge wine double blind, in public. To my knowledge, Parker does not do this and never has. So Ron's credentials are in place, and so is his sense of the absurd."

--Dan Berger, VintageExperiences

"...I consider Ron a very talented writer and I’ve long been an admirer of his scathing wit..."

--1WineDude

"And if any free sites think they can conquer the world, there’s always the Hosemaster to take ‘em down a notch."

--Tyler Colman "Dr. Vino"

"Those of you who know Ron either love or hate him, because he throws jabs like a punch drunk boxer, and we’re all in the firing line. He’ll throw them if he hates you, and he’ll throw them if he loves you. He’s a satirist of exceptional quality."

--Jo Diaz "Juicy Tales by Jo Diaz"

"I must say you are an idiot. I've never liked you. I have no idea why people find you funny."